Editors’ Notehttps://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.editor.html
The Summer 2014 issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly is a landmark in the history of the journal. After careful and prolonged discussions, the editors have decided that this issue will contain the last installment of our Reviewed Elsewhere section. We would first of all like to thank the many contributing editors who have made Reviewed Elsewhere possible over the past twenty-seven years. (A list of all forty-five of these editors appears on page 911, at the end of Reviewed Elsewhere.) The feature has grown tremendously since the first installment appeared in the Summer of 1987, and we’ve been profoundly grateful for the editors’ consistently fine work at identifying and then abstracting ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.editor.html">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2015-08-02T04:00:29-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/images/journals/coverImages/biocoversmall.jpgEditors’ Note2015-07-06text/htmlen-USThe Johns Hopkins University PressEditors’ Note2015-07-062015TWOProject MUSE®02015-07-06T00:00:00-05:002015-07-06Antjie Krog and the Autobiography of Postcolonial Becominghttps://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.rodrigues.html
<p>By Elizabeth Rodrigues</p>
As if back into a womb, I crawl— Imagination disrupts documentary, as Antjie Krog compares the experience of attending the opening hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission to being reborn. Figuratively placing herself back at the beginning of human development, in the early pages of Country of My Skull Krog registers the profound personal effects of the TRC’s public process of national redefinition, and equates its beginning with the beginning of a new life—or potential beginning, as, fittingly, her rebirth is not yet narrated. Before her, and before the South African nation, stands an imperative of transformation so profound that the comparison to physical birth seems apt ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.rodrigues.html">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2015-08-02T04:00:29-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/images/journals/coverImages/biocoversmall.jpgAntjie Krog and the Autobiography of Postcolonial Becoming2015-07-06text/htmlen-USThe Johns Hopkins University PressAntjie Krog and the Autobiography of Postcolonial BecomingRodrigues, Elizabeth2015-07-062015TWOProject MUSE®02015-07-06T00:00:00-05:002015-07-06Constructing National Heroes: Postcolonial Philippine and Cuban Biographies of José Rizal and José Martíhttps://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.valenzuela.html
<p>By Maria Theresa Valenzuela</p>
National heroes, within the context of nationalism, function as an integral component that both supports and is supported by narratives of nation. Nationalism, however, is a closed circuit that demands the paradoxical assertion that despite any acknowledgement of influential outside forces, such as the thrust of global politics or the decay of imperial or colonial control, the nation is nevertheless deemed an autonomous entity with a distinct culture and history. Thus, postcolonial national heroes are simultaneously constructed symbols of conflicting and congruent directions in a nation’s story—or rather, its narrative of nation. I examine two national heroes, one from the Philippines and the other from Cuba: José ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.valenzuela.html">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2015-08-02T04:00:29-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/images/journals/coverImages/biocoversmall.jpgConstructing National Heroes: Postcolonial Philippine and Cuban Biographies of José Rizal and José Martí2015-07-06text/htmlen-USThe Johns Hopkins University PressConstructing National Heroes: Postcolonial Philippine and Cuban Biographies of José Rizal and José MartíRizal, José,2015-07-062015TWOProject MUSE®02015-07-06T00:00:00-05:002015-07-06Witnessing Others in Narrative Collaboration: Ethical Responsibility beyond Recognitionhttps://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.stumm.html
<p>By Bettina Stumm</p>
Politics must be able . . . always to be checked and criticized starting from the ethical. In 2005 I worked with an elderly Holocaust survivor, Rhodea Shandler, to prepare her memoir for publication. The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and Ronsdale Press were interested in publishing her story of motherhood and hiding during the Nazi occupation in Holland, but what they had in hand was a short manuscript that needed to be organized, developed, and doubled in size. My role was to collaborate with Rhodea to bring her story from manuscript to print. We met for a series of interviews in her home so that I could gain a sense of her overall story, as well as gather detailed material to fill the gaps we ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.stumm.html">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2015-08-02T04:00:29-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/images/journals/coverImages/biocoversmall.jpgWitnessing Others in Narrative Collaboration: Ethical Responsibility beyond Recognition2015-07-06text/htmlen-USThe Johns Hopkins University PressWitnessing Others in Narrative Collaboration: Ethical Responsibility beyond RecognitionAuthorship2015-07-062015TWOProject MUSE®02015-07-06T00:00:00-05:002015-07-06Remembering A Baghdad Elsewhere: An Emotional Cartographyhttps://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.shohat.html
<p>By Ella Shohat</p>
A widespread narrative has maintained that Israel rescued Jews from the Arab/Muslim lands, and brought them from the Diaspora to the Promised Land, thus ending a millennial Babylonian Exile. Could it be, I have asked, that this engineered In-gathering of the Exiles itself engendered new exiles that resulted in a series of traumatic ruptures? In the wake of these new diasporizations, what memories could be narrated and which were to be erased in order to fit the official picture of Jew-versus-Arab? Nostalgia itself, however private an enterprise, was inevitably to become an act of political enunciation, trapped in the regime of “taboo memories” and “forbidden reminiscence.” For Arab/Middle Eastern Jews, the ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.shohat.html">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2015-08-02T04:00:29-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/images/journals/coverImages/biocoversmall.jpgRemembering A Baghdad Elsewhere: An Emotional Cartography2015-07-06text/htmlen-USThe Johns Hopkins University PressRemembering A Baghdad Elsewhere: An Emotional CartographyAuthors, Iraqi2015-07-062015TWOProject MUSE®02015-07-06T00:00:00-05:002015-07-06Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market by Julie Rakhttps://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.buss.html
<p>By Helen M. Buss</p>
In 1977 Marcus Billson called “memoir” the “forgotten genre,” and during the later years of the twentieth century, there was little critical or theoretical remembering of the genre, especially in terms of its difference from other generic discourses. But a kind of renaming process was happening in connection with the study of women’s life narratives. In the early 90s both Jill Ker Conway and I were publishing work on what we called women’s “autobiographical” production, but by the end of the century we had both renamed these women’s life narratives as “memoirs.” I would suggest that because both of us had written our own life narratives by that time, we had tangled with genre in the way that creative non-fiction ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.buss.html">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2015-08-02T04:00:29-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/images/journals/coverImages/biocoversmall.jpgBoom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market by Julie Rak2015-07-06text/htmlen-USThe Johns Hopkins University PressBoom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market by Julie Rak2015-07-062015TWOProject MUSE®02015-07-06T00:00:00-05:002015-07-06Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists by Hilary Chutehttps://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.jacobs.html
<p>By Dale Jacobs</p>
In the introduction to Outside the Box, Hilary Chute ruminates on why she is interested in what cartoonists have to say about comics, and why their observations should be important to anyone interested in the comics medium. She writes, “Listening to cartoonists, I became fascinated with the possibilities of the comics form, especially around the relationship between word and image, and the connection of time to space. . . . The exhilarating feature of my interviews with cartoonists—for me, and hopefully for others—is that they capture moments of practitioners reflecting on the form as it is being shaped in contemporary culture” (2). The proof of Chute’s assertion can be seen in reading through this fascinating ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.jacobs.html">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2015-08-02T04:00:29-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/images/journals/coverImages/biocoversmall.jpgOutside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists by Hilary Chute2015-07-06text/htmlen-USThe Johns Hopkins University PressOutside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists by Hilary ChuteCartoonists2015-07-062015TWOProject MUSE®02015-07-06T00:00:00-05:002015-07-06The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture ed. by Tom Brown, Belén Vidalhttps://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.petrolle.html
<p>By Jean Petrolle</p>
The introduction to The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture calls the biographical picture, or biopic, a “troublesome genre” (1). The trouble arises from a tendency among Hollywood biopics to utilize formulaic plot structures, deploy melodramatic clichés, and re-inscribe politically obnoxious ideological formations. These tendencies have made the biopic a target of “critical derision,” largely for its capacity to approach history and reality with irresponsible naiveté, as if the act of representation had no effect on either (2). The essays presented in this volume by co-editors Tom Brown and Belén Vidal call for critical re-assessment of the biopic, given that the genre transcends national boundaries and has, like ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.petrolle.html">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2015-08-02T04:00:29-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/images/journals/coverImages/biocoversmall.jpgThe Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture ed. by Tom Brown, Belén Vidal2015-07-06text/htmlen-USThe Johns Hopkins University PressThe Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture ed. by Tom Brown, Belén VidalBiographical films2015-07-062015TWOProject MUSE®02015-07-06T00:00:00-05:002015-07-06Projected Art History: Biopics, Celebrity Culture, and the Popularizing of American Art by Doris Bergerhttps://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.codell.html
<p>By Julie F. Codell</p>
Doris Berger’s well-researched book, published originally in German (2009), argues that popular art history is affected by, if not determined by, biopics in which myths persist through historical dislocations and narratives intended to reach a mass public. She focuses on two films, Pollock (Director Ed Harris, 2000) and Basquiat (Director Julian Schnabel, 1996). While this is not news to scholars of biopics, what Berger brings to this subject is an in-depth examination, including interviews with directors and actors. She contrasts historical information and its translations into film, to bring into sharper focus the relationship between high and low culture, as she calls them. She carefully analyzes many stills ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.codell.html">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2015-08-02T04:00:29-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/images/journals/coverImages/biocoversmall.jpgProjected Art History: Biopics, Celebrity Culture, and the Popularizing of American Art by Doris Berger2015-07-06text/htmlen-USThe Johns Hopkins University PressProjected Art History: Biopics, Celebrity Culture, and the Popularizing of American Art by Doris BergerRudnytsky, Dorian,2015-07-062015TWOProject MUSE®02015-07-06T00:00:00-05:002015-07-06Medialisierungsformen des (Auto) Biografischen ed. by Carsten Heinze, Alfred Hornunghttps://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.schmidt.html
<p>By Nina Schmidt</p>
The edited volume Medialisierungsformen des (Auto-)Biografischen is centered on the inherent mediality of auto/biographical accounts. The book is the outcome of an interdisciplinary conference of the same name, which was held in Hamburg in December 2011 and was organized by, among others, Carsten Heinze, who is one of the volume’s editors. It builds on discussions prompted by previous publications such as AutoBioFiktion. Konstruierte Identita¨ten in Kunst, Literatur und Philosophie (2006) and Automedialita¨t. Subjektkonstitution in Schrift, Bild und neuen Medien (2008). It brings together research from various disciplines, with contributions from sociology and literary/cultural studies dominating. However, the ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v037/37.3.schmidt.html">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2015-08-02T04:00:29-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/images/journals/coverImages/biocoversmall.jpgMedialisierungsformen des (Auto) Biografischen ed. by Carsten Heinze, Alfred Hornung2015-07-06text/htmlen-USThe Johns Hopkins University PressMedialisierungsformen des (Auto) Biografischen ed. by Carsten Heinze, Alfred HornungHornung, Alfred,2015-07-062015TWOProject MUSE®02015-07-06T00:00:00-05:002015-07-06